The Dover Sole and Spiny Dogfish assessment reviews took place last week. The Dover stock is healthy but Spiny Dogfish is not.
Dover Sole ended up with an estimated status of about 79% B/o (unfished biomass). I do not anticipate any problems for management in the next ten years. In fact, we may be able to increase the annual catch limits (ACL) for Dover beginning in 2023. We don’t land all that many Dover in the Conception area but as you go further north, the take increases significantly.
Spiny Dogfish are a problem for fishery managers. We do not have a directed fishery to speak of and nearly all catch is discarded bycatch. All groundfish sectors land dogfish as bycatch including commercial hook and line, trawl and even recreational fishing. In 2018, landings of dogfish exceeded 1,900 metric tons on the west coast of the U.S. Most of those landings occurred in the trawl fisheries well to the north, particularly in the whiting fisheries.
Spiny Dogfish are slow growing and take a long time to mature. They also have the longest gestation time of any known vertebrate (24 months). I recall during the 2011 assessment review that spiny dogfish can easily be fished to extinction because of their extremely low productivity. The new 2021 assessment suggests the stock is at 34% B/o, which places it firmly within the precautionary management zone where additional management measures need to be taken to protect the stock from dipping into overfished. We reviewed the stock assessment team (STAT) decision’s table Friday and it looked pessimistic for 2023 management and beyond. Total allowable catch may dip all the way down to 500 metric tons or so for the 2023 fishing season. That is a fraction of the recent 5-year average landings of 1,500 mt. annually. The non-trawl landings in 2018 was 247 mt. alone so you can see how problematic this is.
The Science and Statistical Groundfish Subcommittee will be meeting several days before the June Council meeting to review these two new assessments. I will be the GAP advisor at that meeting. If we approve the new assessments, they will then go to the full SSC for approval. There is a decent chance that the Spiny Dogfish will get moved to the Mop-up review in September. Discard accuracy are always an issue with any assessment and the Dogfish was no different. We may want the Mop-up panel to take another look at the discards. I have already thrown into question some of the assumed discard mortality rates and those could get reviewed in September. Ageing is another issue with Dogfish so we could also take another look there.
We also have the Copper rockfish, Quillback rockfish, Squarespot rockfish and Sablefish assessments to review at the SSC Groundfish Subcommittee in June so it will be a busy meeting. I will keep you posted on those reviews as well.